To Wish Impossbile Things
by Lila2
Summary: Sometimes you wonder if your life changed forever when Veronica Mars walked into your life and blew your carefully constructed world to hell.


**Title: **"To Wish Impossible Things"

**Author:** Lila

**Rating:** PG-13

**Pairing/Character:** Celeste

**Spoiler: **"Hot Dogs"

**Length:** one-shot

**Summary:** "Sometimes you wonder if your life changed forever when Veronica Mars walked into your life and blew your carefully constructed world to hell."

**Author's Note:** Written as a character piece, and changed slightly to fit the VM Fanfic Utopia challenge, "How I Met My…" I'm really not sure what I think of this piece, so any constructive feedback is gladly welcomed! I had a lot more trouble writing Celeste than I thought, so please let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

On your worst days, you think you have more in common with Veronica Mars than any other person alive. A year after your daughter's death you walked into Keith Mars' office and took one look at his daughter and chopped off your hair. You did it yourself and it was uneven and jagged and you thought it fit the turn your life had taken. You took yourself to your stylist a week later and he made it pretty and perfect again, the way your life used to be. In the back of your mind, you wondered if you did it on purpose, ruined your hair the way your son had ruined your life, so you could fix it because you couldn't fix anything else. Sort of like those anorexics you always saw profiled on i Oprah /i , girls who starved themselves nearly to death because it was the one thing they could control. You can manage your hair, the length and color, because everything that matters to you is beyond your control. You daughter is dead and your son is responsible and your husband is lost - it isn't the life you pictured when Jake slid a diamond on your finger and you said yes. Two days later you see Veronica Mars across the street, note the rough edges and layers scraping over her cheeks, and know she thought the same thing, that maybe she knows you better than you know yourself.

* * *

You were thirty-eight when Veronica Mars walked into your life, twice as old as your daughter when her life ended. Duncan told you, as you sat with clasped hands at your husband's bail hearing, that his life changed the day you told him Veronica was his sister. Sometimes you wonder if that's the moment your life changed forever, when Veronica Mars walked into your life, a gawky ten-year-old with stringy hair and limbs too long for her skinny body, and blew your carefully constructed world to hell. 

You sometimes think of your life not as something you've lived, but as a series of events you categorize and string together into something that resembles living. You were six when your mama left, pressed a butterfly kiss to your cheek and slid her engagement ring under your pillow and left Lexington and all its memories behind. You were eight when your father remarried, ten when your first half-sister was born, twelve when Daddy forgot you existed. You were fourteen when you had your first kiss, sixteen when you lost your virginity in Wade Compson's boathouse because he told you he loved you and it was the first time you'd heard those words in six years. You know now that it was a lie, a play on words for some easy action and a good time. You wonder if that's what drew you to Jake, because even when he told you he loved you, you knew it was a lie. You were never good at learning from your mistakes, and when he talked a good game and was sweet and tender and everything your past wasn't, you would have followed him anywhere. Your childhood wasn't milk and cookies and catching fireflies in the twilight. You don't remember laughing, you don't remember smiling, you don't remember much happiness at all. You turned eighteen and packed your things and never looked back. There was nothing worth remembering after your mama left except the pain.

You met Veronica's mother a few weeks before you met her daughter, when her husband was voted in as Sheriff and she was back on her old stomping grounds for the first time in years. Her hair was long and blonde and she wore a tank top and sneakers, looking every bit the cheerleader she used to be. You could see why your husband was obsessed with her, because she was like a high school fantasy come to life and even you could understand the appeal of living in the past. Things were better then, easier. There were still lies between you, but back then you believed the lies you told, the lies other people told you.

* * *

Your mama said once, ice clinking against the rim of her highball glass, "Hope for the best and expect the worst." You slept with Wade Compson because you thought he loved you; you married Jake Kane because you believed he loved you; you had a child because you wanted someone to love you. Nothing turned out the way you thought it would. 

Two weeks after you lay on a hard, splintered dock with Wade on top of you, he told you he was going steady with Maggie Carrington and asked for his ring back.

When your husband proposed to you he couldn't look you in the eye. He got down on his knee and took your hand in his and looked everywhere but at your face. You wondered, even then, if he was seeing someone else as he said the words to you. All these years later you know that he was seeing Lianne's face and hearing her voice and feeling her lips against his when you dropped to your knees in front of him and wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him hard and said yes. You wonder now what you wanted to believe more, that he really loved you or that he loved you more than her, that anyone would love you enough to make you his forever.

Minutes after your daughter was born the nurses placed her in your arms and you smiled at your little miracle and looked right into eyes you knew too well. They were wide and blue and turned up a bit at the corners and were like looking back at your mama. You kissed Jake's cheek and echoed his excitement and inside your heart broke. You wanted to tell him that it would all be okay, that your daughter would grow up and grow old and make them happy, when you knew it was only one of the pipe dreams you'd spun back home in Kentucky when happiness seemed just within your reach. You had it all, a husband and a baby and more money then you could ever hope to spend. Only your husband didn't love you, and your daughter had your mother's eyes, and happiness seemed to be slipping away. Instead you pasted on your widest grin, told Jake that it was the happiest day of your life and closed your eyes, hoping your mama's wouldn't be staring back at you when you opened them. You should have listened to your mama; you weren't the kind of girl whose dreams came true. You didn't have to name your daughter or love your daughter or understand you daughter to know her - you'd known your daughter in a past life when you called her Mama - and you knew what was in store.

Lilly was never an easy child. Jake grew up with nothing and he was determined that his only daughter would have everything. Lilly was spoiled, Lilly was selfish, Lilly would stare at you through your mother's traitorous eyes and mock you. You could never fully hate your mother - you hated what she became and you hated what she did - but you could never hate her. She carried you under her heart for nine months, she gave you life, and you did the same for your daughter. You could never hate something that was a part of you. You simply feared her. Your mother wasn't like other women and neither was your daughter. They lived too big and loved too little because they loved themselves most of all. From the moment you brought her home, clothed in the head to toe pink Jake had chosen, you were waiting for it to happen, for Lilly to waltz out of your life like your mother before her. Jake thought you knew about Lianne and compensated by creating the perfect house and the perfect family and the perfect life. He didn't know you were holding back the inevitable, that you were protecting him, that every lie you spun about your perfect world was only to keep Lilly at bay. It wasn't that you didn't respect your daughter or understand your daughter. You weren't waiting for her to disappoint you because you knew it would run deeper than that, hurt more than sleeping with a Mexican biker she flaunted in your face. You were waiting for her to destroy you.

You didn't cry after you found Lilly, not after the shock wore off, and you didn't curse god and make false promises the way Jake did. You didn't feel hate or anger or even grief - you simply felt relief. Like a weight was lifted, like your life was yours again, like you weren't always waiting for the end to come. It didn't mean you didn't miss her, that you didn't mourn her, that you didn't feel a stab in your heart every time your daughter's broken body swam before your eyes. But you were happy it was over, that you could have your life back, that you could live your life.

* * *

You don't hate Veronica Mars any more than you hated your daughter. You know no one would believe you - even if they heard you say it out loud - but it's the truth, the only thing you know is true. She was Lilly's latest pet project, another Madison Sinclair clone, but this one stuck unlike the others. She bounced - literally bounced through your foyer - arms locked with your daughter's, the latest Hanson song bouncing off the marble tiles. Their heads were bent together, blonde on blonde, and they wore the same clothes and smiled just the same way and when Lilly's friend looked at you through warm blue eyes you saw something too familiar looking back at you. For a moment you thought you saw Jake on your wedding day, looking at you in that distant way of his as he pledged his life to you when another woman had his heart. 

They sat on stools in your kitchen, replicas of one another, and you offered them milk and cookies and listened to Veronica tell you all about her life in Neptune, how her daddy was the sheriff and her mother had grown up in town but moved away years ago, how excited she was to live near the beach and told you about the new puppy her parents had just bought. You liked her. You didn't want to, but you did. She was kind and loyal and you knew she'd love Lilly forever. You liked that in a friend, that she would love your daughter as much as you did. It didn't matter that you knew who her mother was or that you knew Lianne's history with your husband. You knew that it might not be the fading sunlight playing tricks on you, that you really might have been watching your daughter's sister chirp happily in your kitchen.

She became part of your life, whether you wanted it or not, this duplicate version of your daughter that you couldn't escape. You were jealous of Lianne and not just because your husband was in love with her or lust with her and couldn't get her out of his system either way. You were jealous because Veronica was her daughter, because her heart wasn't held together by a fragile strip of hope your daughter would one day slice through, finish what your mama started a lifetime ago. You'd see them together, Veronica and Lianne, at birthday parties and school events, watched the way they laughed together. There were no shadows in Lianne's eyes, no weight pressing into her thin shoulders. You bet every time Veronica stayed out a little too late or drank a little too much, Lianne wasn't convinced it was an end she'd been expecting since she first looked into her daughter's eyes. You'd lived in Lianne's shadow for most of your adult life; you'd lived in fear of your child for just as long; you were jealous that she simply got to love her daughter the way you always wanted to love Lilly. For the first time in your life, you did something about it.

* * *

A few weeks after Lilly's death you heard that Lianne skipped town leaving nothing behind but a music box and a hastily scribbled note. It made you think of your mama and the diamond ring you kept on a chain around your neck, close to your heart, where it did so much damage so many years ago. You feel for Veronica because you know what she's going through, and despite everything you don't hate her. You can't hate her. She's a part of your husband, your children's sister. She's more like you than Lilly ever hoped to be. In a flipped reality she could have been yours. She should have been yours. 

It's been over a year and your daughter is long dead and buried, the pool deck cleaned, the proper people paid off and your son's future secured. You don't see Veronica Mars anymore, you can't see her. You told her yourself. You don't hate her. You never did, never could. You lie to her, the way you've lied to everyone before her, the way you lie to yourself. You can't stand to look at her, that much is true, but not because she makes you think of Jake and her mother and the Camelot Motel. Or even because she and her father are digging a little too deeply into your plan to save Duncan's life. Her mother left her and she survived. Your daughter broke her and she still loves her. You know where her path is going to lead. You see Veronica in twenty years, another version of your Lilly with Lianne's eyes at her side, and you see the heartbreak and the pain and the regret. You don't want that for anyone, even Veronica Mars. You can't look at her because you hate her. You can't look at her because when you do you no longer see your husband - you see yourself.

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